


Twice Bitten - Still Shy

by GalGumption



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Dysphoria, Body Image, Bucky Barnes Feels, Dark Avengers - Freeform, Dark Natasha Romanov, Dark Steve Rogers, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Eating Disorders, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Food Kink, Gen, Human/Vampire Relationship, M/M, Multi, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking, Non-Consensual Groping, Non-Consensual Kissing, Non-Consensual Touching, Other, Past Child Abuse, Rape/Non-con Elements, Self-Esteem Issues, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Vampire Bites, Vampire Bucky Barnes, Vampire Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:01:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25524046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalGumption/pseuds/GalGumption
Summary: Her life was going to be strange, her soul marks bore that out, but she didn't anticipate hitching her star to an astrophysicist and ending up working for the Avengers Initiative.It's a pretty sweet deal. Free apartment in the middle of New York City, a cushy salary, and work that she finds meaningful. There's one big drawback, though.It's all the damn vampires...Soul marks are common knowledge, vampires are not. A magically touched Darcy Lewis must navigate her new life living among the most dangerous people on the planet who happen to also be the blood sucking undead. Dealing with information she didn't want, and shouldn't know isn't half the problem, though.Two of those fanged fiends are her soulmates.
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Sam Wilson, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis, James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers, Jane Foster/Thor, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark/Stephen Strange
Comments: 99
Kudos: 456





	1. Entrances

**Author's Note:**

> Big, big, big warning friends. The Avengers are still the good guys, but not all of them are good guys. Darcy has some very serious body image issues all bundled up with an eating disorder. Somehow, we'll get to a happy ending but it's going to be a whole bunch of angst until that time comes. 
> 
> If seeing the good guys commit non-consensual acts on their romantic partners is triggering, please don't read any further. My aim is to titillate you, not further traumatize you. 
> 
> UnBeta'd because I'm terrible and didn't bother.

Every whisper  
Of every waking hour  
I'm choosing my confessions  
Trying to keep an eye on you  
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool, fool  
Oh no, I've said too much  
I set it up

_Losing My Religion_

R.E.M.

* * *

Darcy knows more than she should. It’s a fact of life for witches. Some of her cousins can skim the surface of other peoples minds, some of them can pull secrets from the smoke of a midnight fire. Her talents aren’t quite so useful, but they’ve gotten her out of more trouble than into it, so she keeps up the skills. 

When she was in the foster care system, she leveraged those powers and what spellcraft she’d cobbled together from the internet to navigate the worst of her placements without a lot of the horror stories her peers told. She made it out whole and sane enough to take full advantage of that sweet, sweet government funded education that seemed to be a kind of carrot at the end of a long winding hellish road. It sort of bore out the truth that everyone knew the system was fucked.   
  
But she made do. She took what she could get and she used what she had. That served her pretty well. Thunder Gods and Dark Elves aside. She graduated by the skin of her teeth with a degree that’s basically useless but she’s got a steady job and a boss too preoccupied with her work to be much of a pain in the ass.   
  
Yeah, she and Jane aren’t really friends. It’s more of a caretaker, cranky genius infant relationship. It works, though. And Darcy’s just fine that her boss doesn’t know, or ask a lot about her life. She likes to keep to herself and work on her embroidery or wonder around the strange cities Jane’s dragged her to looking for interesting bookshops and ruins. 

She might say, cautiously, that she was happy. 

That tentative feeling begins to grow the day they arrive at the Avengers Tower in lower Manhattan. For a girl who grew up in some of the worst neighborhoods in New Jersey, she couldn’t be further from her beginnings. 

Everything seems to be aligning in the best possible way, and that should have tipped her off that everything was about to go to hell. 

…

“Is this...a mistake?” Darcy asks Jane as the disembodied butler AI directs them to their new living quarters. 

“No? Why? Is it not big enough?” Her boss peeks her head into the apartment that apparently belongs to her assistant and surveys the space. It’s a one bedroom floor plan with an open living room and kitchen. The furnishings are luxe, but all done out in neutral tones so the occupant can easily add their own color pallet.   
  
“No, no. It’s more than...enough. It’s just nice.” Jane Foster, raised by two actual doctors in a fashionable suburb of Boston probably has no idea why such a gesture would overwhelm Darcy. She’s never had so much space to herself. Her scholarship and government aid at Culver only covered dorm rooms and on campus dining. 

“Take your time settling in. The equipment was delayed from London, and it will be a few days before we can get set up.” Darcy begins to peel off her bulky outer layers. It’s deep into Autumn, but she’s bundled up more than she strictly needs to be. “Three day weekend, score.”

Jane hums and shoulders her duffel bag. “Just be available when everything gets here.” It’s a dismissal but not an unkind one. She watches as the woman makes her way to the elevator. Darcy’s apartment is on the lowest of the residential levels. Floor seventy eight. Above her are the R&D labs, and every actually dwelling place of the Avengers. With whatever equipment and amenities a group of superheroes need to keep on saving the day.  
  
It’s apparent that she is low on the totem poll, but that doesn’t bother her. She has access to what she needs, the labs, and the common areas. It’ll be easy to avoid anyone other than Jane and her direct co-workers.   
  
“Just text me!” Darcy calls out, before stepping into her new home and closing the door. _Her_ door, that she can lock and keep locked whenever she pleases. Her meager personal affects have been delivered already. Only the esoteric scientific equipment seemed to have been held up in customs.   
  
She sheds her scarf, pea-coat and thick cardigan as she glides into the room and flops down on the plush, microfibre soft couch.   
  
“I’m going to need a TV…” She says, again, not to anyone in particular. Unfortunately, someone answers her.   
  
“If I may, Miss Lewis. There is a recessed entertainment system directly in front of you. Would you like me to show you the amenities of your new home?”   
  
Her eyes go wide and she sits up.   
  
“You can listen to me in my own apartment?” That makes her blood run cold, but it was a bit naive of her to think that JARVIS presence stopped at her threshold. It made sense that he’d be monitoring the entire building, her apartment included.   
  
“Yes, but you may enact privacy protocols and I will not actively listen in on you activities while you are home unless specifically called upon.”   
  


“Uhm, sure. Show me around first, and then enact the privacy...stuff.”  
  
“Very good, Miss Lewis.” The wall in front of her opens to a giant flat screen television that’s hooked up to every subscription service imaginable, and all possible cable channels. The lights and temperature controls are voice activated and he teaches her the commands.   
  
She finds her kitchen fully stocked with fresh produce, flour, sugar, butter, and all the pantry items she could ask for. The freezer is filled with fancy ice cream, too, and she makes a mental note to toss that out immediately. She doesn’t trust her will power.   
  
The bedroom has a kingsize bed complete with down comforter and brand new Egyptian cotton sheets. Her bathroom is what really takes her breath away, though. The shower is big enough for three people, and the bathtub is massive. She actually makes a little squeal of delight when JARVIS points out the giant gift basket with Lush bath bombs and shower accessories left there by a very kind Pepper Potts. There’s fancy shampoo, conditioner and body wash along with luxurious body and face lotions. The skincare alone sitting in that gift basket must be worth a couple grand.   
  
It’s almost dizzying. 

“Ok, privacy on now. It is time for a bath.”  
  
“Excellent. Let me know if you need anything, Miss. Lewis.”

She strips off her ratty jeans and slouchy t-shirt. Her clothing needs to be updated, and for once in her life she doesn’t have to cobble together something decent from a thrift store. She can go buy new clothes that have never been worn by anyone but her. 

The bounty of creature comforts is almost, almost enough to distract her from her reflection. Darcy was having such a good day, but she made the mistake of looking at her naked body as she filled the tub with hot water and a lavender bath bomb.   
  
Pale, soft, weird. She frowned, running over the worst features of her mal-shaped form. A soft stomach, hips that made second hand pants shopping hell, and her strange little gap in her smile. Her frizzy hair was bothersome, but the rolls and pudge that she couldn’t ever seem to tame stuck out.   
  
She was so huge.   
  
Her soulmarks were stark and black against such sickly white skin. On her right thigh, angry Russian, done out in a sloppy, almost illegible hand. She’d had it translated her freshmen year of college. The words did not suggest that her soulmate would be a gentle or forgiving soul. It’s english twin, written in neat, self assured handwriting wasn’t all that better. He sounded just as severe and intimidating. She hoped that these words were highly situational. Because she just wanted soulmates to accept this flabby body, and her strange powers. She wanted the connection that everyone else on the planet seemed to have. Everyone but her.   
  
She tore her eyes away from the reflection that taunted her long after the sharp words of Foster Mothers past had pointed out the flaws of it. The girl climbed into the tub and stayed there for over an hour. Trying to soak the feeling of foreboding from her bones. She hoped it was only nerves, and not her powers tipping her off to something looming just around the corner. 

* * *

The next day, Darcy woke up to her own kitchen and her very own coffee maker. She enjoy a hot cup of coffee, black, two splendas, and stared out the giant picture window in her apartment. She could barely make out street below, it looks like a black line of ink. In the distance, the red topped trees of central park stood out like a postcard or Fall aesthetic pinterest board. After she finished her breakfast of grapefruit and egg whites she decided that today would be her day to explore the common areas, and then take a walk in central park. 

Just as she made that decision, she saw a large, black jet approach the building. At first, she thought it might ram straight into the floors above her, but she seen realized that it was the Avengers Quin jet, docking in the hanger ten stories above. They must be back from the mission JARVIS mentioned.   
  
Well, veto that fucking idea. She took this job because she basically had no other choice. The fucks at New SHIELD made it clear that Darcy was a giant security risk, and she wasn’t entirely sure that parting ways with Jane was even possible at this time. To the spooks, Darcy Lewis knew too much about Jane Foster’s research although she knew that was hardly the case. She still didn’t understand the chicken scratch that Jane had her transcribe. But Darcy did all of the administration tasks Jane was basically incapable of doing.

In any case, she doesn’t want to to know the Avengers. She has no intention of befriending a single one of them. Trouble follows those people like wet to the ocean. Darcy has enough baggage and bullshit to deal with, she sure as shit doesn’t want theirs.

Central park it is.   
  
“Hey JARVIS, can I ask you a favor?” She calls out, while pulling her big, chunky warm boot onto her foot and adjusting her beanie. She shoulders her messenger bag and waits for the AI to respond.   
  
“How may I be of service?”   
  
“Can you uhm, make sure I don’t run into anyone on the elevator when I leave?” It wasn’t likely, but there was a small chance that she might run into one of them and she had a kick ass day planned. The witch was trying not to spoil it.   
  
“Certainly. The team are debriefing with Maria Hill, there is no one traveling to this section of the tower. I’d say you have an eight hour window to come and go without unwanted interaction.”   
  
She smiles and thanks the AI.   
  
Everything’s going to be fine.

* * *

Everything is going to fucking shit. 

Bucky doesn’t bother to shower or wash the blood from his face before following Steve into the conference room. None of them can feel physical fatigue anymore, but they are all tired. 

Even Natasha is on edge. It’s in their nature as predators to come in from a fight and sequester themselves with their mates. That he and Steve are missing their own is a sore spot, but he’d like nothing more than to pull the big blond into a warm bath and lick the blood off of one another. 

The operation was clean. He and Clint picked off any stragglers and the HYDRA base was neutralized along with all living souls within it. They all came into their unnatural abilities differently before forming this initiative of monsters, but they worked well as a team. Each one of them were trying to be better than their own nature. 

The limits of those heroics and camaraderie were about to be tested, though. Thor seemed non-plussed, but Bucky knew his woman was here. She’d come in with her assistant the day before. It was part of his job to assess the risk of two mortal variables, so he was well aware of Foster’s position.   
  
Her assistant seemed harmless. Sweet little dark haired thing who made it through a rough go in the system. He’d read her file front to back, and then once again for good measure. Then he asked JARVIS to over-ride her privacy protocols almost immediately and spent a few hours observing her on the flight home.   
  
Steve called him on it. But he’d argued somewhat successfully that he needed to make sure she was kosher, and he managed to restrain himself from watching her in the bath like the absolute creep he was.   
  
Hill clears her throat to get the meeting started and he’s having trouble focusing. Which isn’t new, per se. He usually retreats into himself during these things. He feels a bit like a bastard with his interest in the mortal girl. It’s undoubtedly the part of him that’s a beast taking interest in possible prey. God, he hates it.   
  
The girl looks sweet. Poor thing doesn’t belong here. He glances up at Natasha, who’s similarly bored and casing Darcy’s file, too.   
  
He doesn’t like the woman’s interest, it’s too much like his own.   
  
“Do we _really_ have to do this?” Stark pipes up, slumped over the table, no doubt texting Pepper while he tries to make a swift retreat. Their relationship with New SHIELD is still shaky, and not well defined. He hates this shit, but he hates Tony’s antics a little bit more for potentially making problems for them all. If they aren’t working for the initiative, then they could be targets themselves. He knows the mortals keeping their secrets are weary of the room full of monsters. Doesn’t matter that every single one of them would die for their own sins. 

Hill’s pulse remains cool and even. He’s never met a human with such iron control of her emotional response. He admires that about her. 

“We do.” Is her curt, clipped answer. There’s a collective groan from lungs that don’t need air, and an Asgardian. 

* * *

Darcy gave up on finding a coven not long after striking out on her own at Culver. She knew very little about her own nature that first year so her disappointment ran bitterly deep. Witches don’t allow anyone outside of their bloodline into the circle. It’s just not done. Her orphan status was shameful. Although many of them pitied her. A witch, she learned, was only as strong as her family bonds. It made that empty piece of her soul where her soulmates were meant to fit feel cold. 

She couldn’t find a circle, but she could find other magic users. The Touched, is what they called themselves. Psychics and weirdos, mostly. Before totally shunning her the witches at least showed her how to educate herself.  
  
Every city has a magic shop or two. New York was bound to be full of them. But they weren’t things you found on Google, and they weren’t obvious. New Age and occult shops were for dabbling mortals. If it was obviously ‘witchy’ then it wasn’t the real thing. Generally, the shops were bookstores, and since she had a fondness for bookstores to begin with, it wasn’t difficult to find one.   
  
As she hit the streets, Darcy decided to start with the most obvious location. The Strand was pretty high profile, but a city this size was bound to have a load of magical folk. It made sense for such a place to hide in plain sight.   
  
She was delighted to be right. 

The thing about Magic Shops, is that you have to be a little magic to pick them out. So she spends about an hour in the stacks, running her fingers over the spines of books before she found the entrance. It glowed with a faint blue light, easily missed if you were distracted by your phone or actually looking to buy a title.   
  
The little door read ‘Staff Only’, but she knew that when she touched the doorknob, no one would notice her slipping inside.   
  
The interior was cramped, a miniature version of the mortal book store adjacent to it. But this room was lit with oil lamps and flickering tallow candles. Many of the books on these shelves were illegible under unnatural light. Wards and runes glistened in the pale light, indicating this shelf contained elixirs, the other Beastiary tomes.   
  
She took her time, browsing for pleasure and not anything in particular. It just felt good to be in these places. Soak up the magic and the community of it. Here, she was just another Touched person. The few friends she could count in her life were made in places like this.   
  
“You’re a Walker, aren’t you?” The old women behind the cash register stared out owlishly behind thick round glasses. Her white hair was pulled and braided into a crown and she wore a red hand dyed dress and a knit coat with buttons that changed colors every time Darcy blinked. The proprietors of these places were usually chatty, and they tended to know their shit. It had been awhile since someone called her so easily, though.   
  
“I am.” She didn’t mean to sound cagey. The strange old woman was probably pointing out her abilities so she could help her find a useful book. “I’m trained, though. Don’t need a manual. I’m just looking-”   
  
“For some community?” The old woman muses. Darcy can’t help the shy little smile on her face. “I’m that obviously lonesome?” The woman laughs and beckons Darcy over. Who says New Yorkers are rude?   
  
“No. I just know the type. This is a big place, and it’s overwhelming to newcomers. You’ve got that look to you. Like you just got off the boat.”   
  
“That’s pretty accurate.”

There was no one else in the shop. The space was small enough that she’d see anyone skulking around, but the woman cast about anyway. “Some advice. I’m one of the only Seers left in the tri-state area, and a lot of people are weary of Walkers. I wouldn’t be too open about that in most company.”  
  
Darcy was a Dream Walker. Someone who could travel unseen and spy on anyone without their consent or knowledge tended to make most people a little twitchy. “Thanks. I’ll definitely be careful.” She would have anyway, but it felt nice for someone to care enough to warn her.   
  
“Datura. Pleasure to meet you.” Darcy smiled and introduced herself in kind. They chatted like that for a few hours and she left with a tote-bag full of books she didn’t really need, and a new friend she did. 

* * *

She skipped lunch, and spent the rest of the day exploring the park. It was well past dark by the time she took her aching feet back up to her apartment to dump her books. She was about ready to heat up a Lean Cuisine when someone knocked at her door.   
  
She sighed, Jane had texted her earlier that day and asked when she’d be home. Although there were no further instructions. The equipment can’t have arrived yet, and no one else would be visiting her but her neighbor down the hall.   
  
The witch was right. Jane was fiddling with her phone, dressed in a halfway decent outfit. She even washed her hair. Ah. Thor is back. Right.   
  
“We’re going to be late.”   
  
“Remember that I can’t read your mind.” Darcy huffed, hugging her arms around her body. She was wearing a bit, black cable knit cardigan over dark wash skinny jeans and a pale pink, satin camisole. It was one of her rare luxury thrift finds and she wore it every chance she could. Although it suddenly felt a bit too restrictive as dread filled her stomach. Did she have somewhere to be?   
  
Jane huffed and pocketed her phone. “Thor wants us to come up for dinner with the team. And I think Stark wants to talk my ear off about using his stupid, mass-produced equipment.” Darcy raised an eye brow but kept her piece. As far as she was concerned, machines that were not cobbled together by hand and held together by optimism would be much safer for them both. 

“I was going to stay in and read.” It sounded whiney, and it was. She wasn’t paid to socialize, and she was still not too keen on hanging out with a bunch of assassins and super soldiers. Other than being ten pounds of trouble in a five pound bucket, they were all fucking intimidating. She’d seen them in action on television over the years, and followed the drama with SHIELD online like it was a soap opera. Those people were powerful and beautiful. She was a short, chunky, administrator with a bachelor’s degree and no marketable skills outside of keeping Jane Foster alive. 

“Nope. You’re not going to mope. I need you to be productive and happy. And it won’t kill you to get to know some of the people you’re going to be working alongside.”   
  
Well, fuck.   
  


* * *

Steve feels about as relaxed as he can, which isn’t very. He’s a little on edge about the human girl Foster brought in. Her position is non-negotiable, but he’s worried that she might be too much of a distraction. So far, they’ve managed not to kill anyone who didn’t deserve it since forming the initiative. He’s proud of their progress. 

He’s standing on the perimeter of the get together. Watching as Thor introduces his mate to the rest of the team, boasting about her loudly. She seems to take it in stride, but the girl by her side looks like she wants to crawl under a bed and hide. He can’t stop staring at her. Its been a long time since he’s seen a woman like that.   
  
Soft, plush flesh and red lips. He just got done chastising Bucky for cyber stalking the girl and now he’s sizing her up like prey. Or worst. 

Christ. She’s just his type. He’s proud to say that he doesn't hunt innocent mortals to kill. He found a better focus for his hunger. Feeding on an enemy isn’t honorable, but it’s better than falling onto a sweet little peach like the frightened thing in front of him. 

He looks around the room and finds that he’s not the only one with this line of thought. Bucky gives him a significant look before retreating. Doesn’t say hello to her, or get close enough to touch. He’s proud of his lover in that moment. Removing himself from temptation, it’s more than Natasha can manage.   
  
The redhead has insinuated herself into the conversation between Thor, his mate, and the silent girl.   
  
He is absolutely not going to let Natasha cozy up to the girl. Not on his fucking watch. He sets his drink down and makes his way over to them.   
  


* * *

Oh fuck. Fucking fuck. A mantra of profanity rolls through her head. Vampires. She is surrounded by fucking vampires. 

Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. Vampires. Bruce Banner? Blood sucker. The dark long haired, painfully attractive assassin Buck Barnes? Also a vampire.   
  
Basically, every Avenger but Thor is undead. It knocks her off an already unsteady social footing. She was nervous enough being around these people, and now she finds out that they aren’t even really...people. 

She’s run into the occasional vampire. They are terrifying. She heard a rumor that the blood of a Magically Touched person is like a delicacy to them. Oh, fuck she doesn’t want to find out if that’s true. Maybe if she stays quiet and play shy they won’t even notice she’s there? Darcy is pretty forgettable by design.

“I’m Natasha.” The red head turns directly to Darcy and pins her with steely, cold blue eyes. There’s calculation and the hunt of hunger in those eyes. A pale, well manicured hand extends towards her and Darcy looks like it as if her the woman’s fingers are covered in blood.   
  
“Darcy.” She chokes out. Thor and Jane are busy chatting to Bruce, and they don’t seem to notice the spy sizing Darcy up. She doesn’t want to be rude, an therefore memorable, so she takes the womans hand and shakes it. 

Aren’t vampires supposed to be cold and dead? The skin she touches is overheated, but the vampire isn’t sweating. Those fingers close over her wrist when she tries to pull her hand away and the woman steps closer. Darcy can feel her pulse pounding in her ears, and she knows the vampire does too.   
  
But she can’t look away. God, she knows what she’s trying to do. She’s trying to thrall her. She can feel a silent, insistent pressure against her mind, and she knows if she lets it in, it’ll wrap around her will and strangle it.   
  
So she doesn’t let it in. After a few beats where it’s apparent the girl isn’t affected by her abilities, The Black Widow lets go of Darcy’s wirst. “Interesting.”

“Natasha.” A voice, stern, deep, from over her shoulder. Darcy turns around to see Captain America shooting Natasha a meaningful look. His eyes flick to her, and his face would be kind if he smiled. He holds her down with that same unwieldy gaze but there’s not attempt to violate her mind. 

“Miss Lewis, take care not to wander out of your designated security access.” His words are clipped, efficient and they matched what’s inked into her skin. Her heart stops, her lips part, and she reacts without thinking.   
  
“Ok.” The girl takes a breath to say something else when Natasha interrupts her. Oh god - that’s her word. He doesn’t seem phased by it, as a matter of fact, she can sense that she’s being dismissed as the two vampires start up what she senses is a veiled argument.   
  
Darcy shrinks back and turns around. When she tells Jane that she’s not feeling well, the woman protests. She hasn’t even had dinner yet, and they were about to sit down to pizza and wings. Thor gives her one of his spine compressing hugs that manages to make her feel safe and lift her spirits a little bit. He sweet talks Jane until she doesn’t care if Darcy stays or go.   
  
Which she absolutely takes advantage of, and gets the fuck out of the den of actual god damn vampires. The girl scurries towards the elevator, but she looks up as the doors drift shut.   
  
Steve Rogers is staring right at her. 

  
And then she’s alone, and her knees give out.   
  
Her soulmate is Captain America, and he’s a blood sucking fiend.


	2. ...and then there were two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the confusion about the chapters. This is an ongoing work. My posting schedule will likely be a little erratic, but I've got the writing bug so this one should come along quickly. 
> 
> I will warn readers when the tags apply to the chapter. Are any of these relationships even a little bit healthy or ok in real life? Hell no. This is a work of fiction and fantasy. 
> 
> Trigger warning for eating disorders and body image issues.

They can keep me high  
'Til I tear the walls  
'Til I save your heart  
And I take your soul  
And what have we done?  
Can I be undone?  
In the evil heart  
In the evil soul

**Seven Devils**

Florence and the Machine

* * *

He can’t stop thinking about that girl. Darcy Lewis.  
  
Tony’s got his arm detached, wires feeding into his shoulder while the fingers on it twitch. It’s been a few years since he got a ‘tune up’ as Tony puts it, and Bucky can’t really argue with him. Shuri did a great job crafting the limb, and Strange enchanted it so that the metal would be compatible with his inhuman physiology. 

She smelled like spiced peaches. That’s not a good sign at all. It’s a terrible test of his self control when his predators brain translates a mortals scent into one of his favorite foods. It’s only ever happened once, and the results were tragic for them both.

_Stevie laying on the banks of the Triskelion. The helicarrier disintegrating above them. He’s lost so much blood, it’s coated his lips...he smells like fresh baked bread._

_He can’t let him die._

It’s been two years and Steve’s taken to the change better than he’d hoped. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever forgive himself, but his soulmate feels differently. Their unique serums both work to allow them to walk in the daylight, and unlike the rest of the Avengers, they can still consume mortal food. He says it’s the best of both worlds, and now they can be together forever.

Steve’s always been an annoyingly earnest optimist like that.

Tony works in companionable silence. Stark has a reputation for being an annoying loudmouth, but he’s good at his trade and will go quiet for hours if no one disturbs him. For once, Bucky’s itching to talk, about something, anything. Get his mind off the mortal girl that he knows is twelve stories below him. 

He knows, because he’s still watching her on JARVIS security feed. The AI gives him override authority, but the computer will kill the signal when Darcy is getting undressed, or bathing. It’s good that the computer has that much autonomy. It makes up for his total lack of self control.

Bruce is shuffling around his desk, holding his cell phone to his ear with one hand while the other spears into rumpled and unruly hair. 

Of them all, he thinks that Bruce is probably the worst off. Banner is a vampire, and The Hulk...well, is the Hulk. He was looking for a cure after he was turned and found something worse. Poor fuck. 

He’d pick up the conversation if it were happening across the street and he tries to but fails to tune it out. His mind needs something else to latch onto. It keeps guiltily wondering what that girl is doing, and who she’s with.

“Do you need a hand with the move? I’m sorry I couldn’t get down to D.C. with you.” He can hear Bruce’s soulmate on the other end, Sam Wilson. It’s not his fault, he can’t exactly walk out into the sun to help him load a Uhaul. 

Bruce glances over to Bucky, self conscious and shy. But he doesn’t police his tone.  
  
“Be careful, and get home soon. I-” The vampire smiles. Sam finishes the sentence for him. There’s warmth there, fangs and all. When Banner ends the call he looks up to Bucky. 

“Sam should be here this evening.” Bucky can read the question in the statement. His mate is mortal, and he’s worried about...him, Steve, Natasha. All of them. 

“He’ll be fine, Bruce. He smells like you and he’s marked. No one’s going to move in on your man.” Tony pipes up, straightening out to tap at a holographic read-out next to the Bucky’s left ear. 

“Is that how it works?” Bucky asks, genuinely curious. Statistically speaking, it’s likely their soulmate is a human. When someone is turned, their marks don’t go away. 

“With vampires? Yeah, there’s a whole set of taboos against it molesting someone’s mate. Technically, you can have a blood hunt called on a vampire who crosses the line.” Tony begins to attach Bucky’s arm back into it’s socket while he speaks. 

“At least, until you can turn them.” Tony looks up and gives Bruce a pregnant look, the scientist looks away and studies a messy stack of paper on his desk. 

“We’re not in a hurry. Sam is young.” Right. He’d bet his adamantium arm that’s not the whole story. Bruce hates what he is, it’s a curse. He doesn’t want to pass that curse on to someone he loves. He gets that. 

“It’s better to change him than lose him.” Natasha appears at the doorway. It doesn’t spook them much, that’s one of her abilities. It kind of irks him that she uses it so freely around them. That might be because he’s a bit annoyed with her on principle lately. 

Steve told him what she tried to do to Darcy last night. 

“Not everyone is so blaise about holding their mate down and turning them into a monster.” Tony quips. Natasha shrugs and steps into the room. “Clint had no complaints.”

“I’m not having this conversation.” Bruce says, pulling his glasses off and pinching the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t need the lenses, but it’s one of those mortal comforts he refuses to give him. Like Steve’s morning coffee. 

“Fine by me, I came here to talk about Darcy Lewis.” 

“Are you going to apologize to Thor for trying to thrall his friend, or is this just a gossip sesh?” Bucky’s arm twitches as Tony calls the assassin out. He agrees. But he’s angry, and defensive and he doesn’t know why. It feels a bit like fighting over prey. He hasn’t done that with Natalie since the Red Room.

“I wasn’t going to keep her under. We need to know how suggestable she is. I believe that Bucky has vetted her, but now she’s something of a liability. One of us should claim her so she has a mark and is therefore less of a target to others.”

It’s not a bad argument, but it makes his fist clench.  
  
“Absolutely, fucking, not.” Bucky grinds out. His fangs drop, and there’s gravel in his voice. He’s ready to launch himself at her, even missing an arm. “Especially if you’re volunteering yourself to do it. We don’t take mortals, we don’t keep blood dolls.”

“That’s self righteous for a man who wants her for himself.” Tony has to grip him hard on the shoulder to keep the big, bulky vampire from standing up. 

“Knock it off, both of you. No one’s touching the girl. If she’s not your mate, then she’s off limits. I’ll get a tracker installed on her phone and make sure she’s got a security detail.”

Natalia stands down. It looks like she was prepared to go toe to toe with him over it.

“She’s going to cause problems.” The spy leaves them with that prediction and leaves. Tony calls out after her. “We’ll deal with them then.”

* * *

He’s agitated for the rest of the day. Another hour of Tony fishing around the internals of his arm has him itching for something to do. Maybe Steve will be amendable to fucking after he gets back from his meeting with Fury. Who is he kidding, Steve is always down to go at him. He’s so keyed up, it’s going to have to be rough to get this simmering territorial rage to die down. 

The sun’s still up, and the UV treated glass in the tower allows for the resident vampires to walk around freely. Although they are still most nocturnal by habit. He stops off at the common kitchen to grab a bag of coffee for Steve. And he’s suddenly craving fresh peaches, so he might see what fresh produce is around. Food doesn’t sustain them, but they both like the taste. 

That delicious, sweet spiced scent hits him hard as he steps into the kitchen. He must have been deep into his own head, because he didn’t put it together that the scent is familiar. Darcy Lewis looks up and yelps when he walks in on her. He was moving quickly, a brisk mortal pace. She surprises him, and he lets his anger spill out into his words. 

“Какого черта ты тут делаешь?” The girl freezes in her tracks. The blood drains from her pretty features. Of course she’s terrified. He’s got over a foot on her and he just spewed out something hostile in a foreign language.  
  
“Sorry.” Her voice sounds small and dis-used. Is she shaking? He feels like an absolute piece of shit. 

“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t expect you here, it’s fine.” He tries to soften his tone, but he doesn’t smile. There are two subtle, sharp points in his mouth that don’t look natural. Although he wishes he could give her the kind of grin that used to melt a little ladies heart when he was younger. 

“Okay.” She puts her head down and scurries out and back onto the elevator, looking up at him like a scared animal before the doors close. Fuck. That could have gone better. 

He thinks for a moment, that she said his word. Just the one. He and Steve had the most mundane, obnoxiously common soulmarks. _Ok_ and _Sorry._ They hear that a dozen times a day at SHIELD HQ. He wants to find their third piece, but they are beholden to that person making the first move. It’s just another layer to his frustration for the day. 

For a few moments, he lets himself fantasize about Darcy. How she might taste and feel in his arms, if she were theirs. 

But she’s not theirs. The girl would have said something, who would ignore their soulmates when they spoke their words?

* * *

Even though she was half expecting it, she was shaking. Bucky Barnes was Steve Rogers soulmate, it was common knowledge after SHIELD fell and Natasha dumped their data on the internet. The Russian on her skin tracked with the ex-HYDRA assassin. But it was still overwhelming. 

He was a vampire, too. She kept looking at his mouth, waiting for him to open it wide enough to see fangs. But they’ve been living in plain sight for so long, it made sense that he was controlled enough not to show them. 

Darcy let her forehead rest against the cool metal of the elevator. She felt overheated and dizzy. She was out of eggs in her kitchen and thought to come down and snag some from the giant commercial fridge on the common floor. She was restricting herself to one meal a day for the week, and then gradually adding a few hundred calories at the end of the day. 

So far eggwhites were the easiest to cook up, but she was already feeling dizzy and it wasn’t even five yet. It must be the shock of meeting her second soulmate. She’s usually better about making it to the end of the day without caving in and eating something bad. 

It felt even more urgent that she lose those stubborn thirty pounds. 

Her soulmates would be disgusted with her body as it is right now. She couldn’t stop the images of their inevitable rejection. Last night, she tossed and turned, thinking about each individual nightmare scenario. From laughter, to violence, to disappointment.  
  
She was terrified of them, but she decided that it didn’t matter what they were. She’d love them human or not. It was just impossible for them to love her. Who would?

“Miss Lewis, your blood sugar levels are very low.”  
  
The elevator doors are open. She can see down the short hall leading down to her apartment. When did that happen?

“Huh?”

“You have consumed less than five hundred calories today and I took the liberty of reading your vitals. I suggest you eat a simple carbohydrate followed by a full balanced meal. Immediately.”

Would he tell on her? Her mind was a bit fuzzy. She didn’t want anyone to know about her weightloss attempts. They wouldn’t understand, and they’d surely look down on her for trying to many times and failing. 

“Please don’t tell anyone.”

She makes her way down the hall. A bubble of lightness forming in her brain as she opens her door and makes a beeline for the kitchen. She never got around to emptying out the freezer. So she grabs a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Half Baked and starts in on it.

“I will not alert medical staff unless you ask me to do so, or are in need of immediate assistance.”  
  
“Thanks.” She mumbles around a spoonful of ice cream. She tells herself that she’s only going to have a few bites, but she demolishes the container in about ten minutes. Tears of frustration start to roll down her cheeks. She wants to go throw it all back up, but she doesn’t trust the AI not to consider it ‘immediate assistance’.  
  
“Privacy protocols.” She puts her head in her arms and sobs.

That goes on for an hour or so before she stops feeling sorry for herself and gets to making dinner. She’ll make up for the bad food with a nice salad and sliced chicken breast.

She tries focus on cooking and forget about her total lack of privacy, and the soulmates that don’t want anything to do with her. But she hasn’t gone a day without someone showing up and disturbing her peace in her new apartment, so statistically speaking, she shouldn’t be surprised by the knock on the door.  
  
“Miss Lewis, it appears that Miss Potts is at your door.” Darcy asked JARVIS to announce who was at her door from now one. She’d just finished her meager dinner and was about to do the dishes.  
  
“Let her in, oh my god.”  
  
Pepper Potts. She’s so flustered that the CEO of Stark Industries is walking into her living rom that she forgets to be nervous about the fact that she’s a vampire.  
  
The woman is tall and lithe. Her strawberry blonde hair accentuated by an eternally youthful face and smiling eyes. There is a warmth and sincerity in her that catches Darcy off guard. 

“I hope I’m not interrupting your evening.”  
  
“No! Not even a little bit. You want some tea, or coffee, or something?” Calm down, vampires aren’t fucking demons. So far the only inappropriate thing a vampire has pulled on her was that mental bullshit from Natasha last night. 

“No thank you, I can’t stay very long, but I just wanted to come and see how you were settling in. Is there anything you need?”

Is there anything she needs? Liposuction. Ha. 

“I am good, really. This is more than enough. Thank you for the nice gift basket and - well everything about this place.”

Pepper seems to read something about her past in her the way she reacts to the finery. She doesn’t know how, but the woman seems even more gentle. 

“I’m glad. We haven’t had anyone outside of the team stay with us in quite awhile and I know Tony isn’t the best host. If you need help with your dress fitting tomorrow morning, I’m a phone call away. JARVIS will make sure my number is in your phone.”  
  
That’s a lot to process. Her brain skids to a halt with mention of dresses, and fittings. The vampire must read Darcy’s look of utter confusion because she goes on.

“Sorry, I asked Dr. Foster to let you know. We host quite a few fund raisers in the lobby. They are often black tie events. As a member of the Initiative staff, we’d like to extend an invitation to you. I arranged for a fitting for a few dresses, as I know not everyone has a designed wardrobe in their back pocket and I didn’t want you to feel obliged to acquire one.”

Yeah. That is totally overwhelming and she might throw up. Pepper seems increasingly concerned as Darcy turns a pale shade of green.  
  
“Are you all right, Darcy?” The woman steps towards her, but doesn’t reach out. She is respecting Darcy’s space to an obsessive degree. 

“No-uhm, yes. I am fine. Just- I don’t think they will have anything that’s going to fit me.” The thought of trying on dresses with zippers that won’t zip and catty stylists commenting on her body makes her want to jump out the window. She absolutely cannot do this. She can’t. Everything is starting to spin.

“Darcy, hey, Darcy.” Pepper is suddenly in front of her, and when did she move? Maybe when her world started to spin. “Sit down, come on.” The older woman leads Darcy to the couch and has her take a seat. Her heart is beat hard in her throat and it’s just like shopping for clothes in 9th grade all over again. With Marge, her fourth foster mother, tutting about how _we are going to need to cut holes in a circus tent to fit you, child._

“Sorry. I’m sorry. I just-” Pepper quotes her with a hug. It should be terrifying, because now the woman is right next to her neck, but she doesn’t make a move to do anything but console the girl. 

“JARVIS as your measurements. And I’ve made sure you’ll have a selection of lovely things that will fit just fine. They might need to do a little bit of hemming and some alterations because couture is so personal I promise.” That makes her feel better. There’s still a little mote of panic in the back of her head, but if Pepper Potts says so, it’s got to be true. 

“Miss Lewis, Mister Barnes is-”  
  
The door flies open and Bucky Barnes stomps into the room. He’s wearing tactical pants and a tight black tank top. He draws up short when he finds Pepper sitting on the couch with her and seems to be cycling from furious to confused. 

What the fuck is with these people and personal space?

“What the hell dude!?” Darcy is usually slow to anger, but this guy just barged into her home and right into the middle of a minor emotional breakdown.  
  
“Sorry - I- Pepper. Tony needs to speak to you. There's an emergency.” It’s Pepper’s turn to look furious. She stands up and straightens out her sleek, well tailored white dress suit. “He could have called me. Next time, have him do that before you barge into someone elses home.” Her tone is crisp and icey, and Darcy isn’t sure what’s going on between them, but there seems to be an array of silent accusations going on between the two.  
  
This is overwhelming. She feels exposed with her soulmate in her home, dressed to kill (literally) and spitting mad.  
  
“Darcy, I am sorry for all of this. I’ll make sure the fitting goes smoothly tomorrow, and please. Let me know if you need anything.” She gives Darcy a warm smile and then turns to Bucky. “You’ll escort me up to the penthouse, Sergeant Barnes?” It’s not really a question. The man, nods and begins to back out of Darcy’s apartment. She looks up in time to see him give her a tentative, close lipped smile.  
  
“I’m sorry, about all that.” Why would he apologize? “Just don’t do it again, I might be naked next time.” She grouses, meaning to warn him off with the prospect of seeing something he definitely doesn’t want to see.  
  
It only makes his eyes flick down her body before he gives her a lazy grin that almost, almost shows off the fang she knows is hiding behind that smile. 

“Threaten me with a good time, Lewis.” And then they are both gone and she’s just...just so fucking confused. Why would he say that?

* * *

Because she is a consummate professional, Pepper waits until they are in the elevator before laying in one him.  
  
“What was that about?” It must come from spending so much time with Tony, but she’s incredibly good at making a man feel ten inches tall without raising her voice an octave. 

“I’m sorry. After what Natasha pulled on her last night - I’ve been watching-”  
  
“What did Natasha pull?” Concern colors her features, and he feels even more of an ass. Pepper wouldn’t hurt the girl, what the fuck was he thinking? She’s got her own mortal mate, even if he is the Sorcerer Supreme. 

“She attempted to thrall her.” Wow, that was the wrong thing to say. Pepper looks about ready to skin the spy alive. “That’s not going to stand.” A beat passes, and then she comes to the second conclusion that’s probably going to piss her off.  
  
“You thought I was going to feed on her?”  
  
He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “When you went to hug her I- panicked.” He doesn’t usually admit his anxieties to anyone other than Stevie, this is a bit of a step for him. But it’s making him feel lousy. 

“What about your interest? She has her privacy protocols up. You’re over-rides are meant for her security and safety, not to spy on her.”

He feels laid bare at that, and she’s not wrong. He knows his intentions aren’t good. He shouldn’t trust himself with her any more than he trusts Natasha. He can’t explain the sudden possessiveness, and he doesn’t have it in him to lie to Pepper.

“I don’t know. She’s just - young, and alone here and I-”  
  
The elevator dings and opens up onto Tony’s penthouse floor he shares with Pepper and Stephen Strange. The woman steps off and turns to him. 

“Bucky - I know you don’t want her to get hurt. But I think you should examine your own motivations before you spend any more time watching over Darcy.” He nods, like a chastised school boy and the conversation is cut short by the door closing. 


	3. Fucking and Fighting and Misunderstanding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys take their frustrations out on one another, and Darcy misunderstands Steves's actions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for rough boy on boy action. It’s totally consensual but also pretty problematic. 
> 
> I suck at fight scenes, so don’t at me about it.

He took me for a ride  
In the late hours of the night  
Oh, what a fearful sight  
Blood in the water

And oh he came to be  
My blackest memory

Blood in the Water

_Joanna Jones and The Dame_

* * *

He asks Bucky to meet him in the usual spot.

Sub-basement nine takes up the entire footprint of the tower. They store confiscated HYDRA weapons and artifacts there. Mostly, it’s a place they shove things that should be forgotten. Steve and Bucky have been using it since they moved into the tower to let off steam.   
  
Bucky’s been a vampire since HYDRA pumped him through with their own cocktail of serum and blood back in the 40’s. They didn’t understand their own creation, and so eventually, he turned on them. And then - two years ago, turned Steve.

So Steve has spent less time as a vampire than any of his teammates and everyday feels like an impossible learning curve. He wouldn’t trade it for anything, but sometimes he can’t get a handle on the new urges. 

So Bucky let’s him burn off the worst of it and placate his beast with chase games. There’s a common misconception that vampires are undead. To the contrary, they are more alive, more tuned into the basest parts of their psyches. Steve doesn’t know what he’d do if these desires got out of control, if he did these things to a human being and not to a consenting partner. At this point in his life he’s not afraid of much, but that thought terrifies him.    
  
Hunt. Feed. Fuck. It runs like an unhelpful mantra through his head as he paces in the dark, gloom of the basement. He’s wearing gym clothes. It looks like they might be getting ready to spar, but for the length of his teeth and the red tint to his eyes. 

“Getting impatient, lover?” Bucky’s voice floats nearby, dark and low. Steve growls, his blood is up and he leaps onto a stack of wooden crates covered by a dark cloth. The higher ground isn’t helpful. A human would see pitch blackness, but his eyes reflect light like a cat, and it’s plenty bright enough to pick out movement a hundred yards away.    
  
Bucky is a sadist. He keeps Steve just a step behind him for the better part of an hour. It’s the best kind of torture for them both. He can feel something in him turn over and rest, appeased by this offering. Bucky must be eager for the pay off, because he slips up and Steve finds his opportunity.    
  
He pounces from high ground and they both grunt. Tumbling to the ground while they growl and snap their teeth.    
  
“Submit.” Steve commands. His voice almost unrecognizable in its current octave. He pushes his lover down, trying to pin his hands above his head.   
  
“Take it.” He hisses back, and takes a swing at Steve full bore. He misses, and uses the moment to slam him onto his stomach, covering his body with his own. His cock is aching in his track pants. He wraps a meaty hand around the back of Bucky’s neck and squeezes until the man goes limp.    
  
It’s a miracle that he doesn’t rip either of their pants off in his haste. In this state, he isn’t coherent enough to prep the other Bucky, it’s not even on his mind. Luckily, he anticipated this and did it for him. He shoves three calloused fingers into the other man’s ass just to make him feel it. Below him, there’s grunting and a low, pained whine. 

He doesn’t wait. He  _ can’t  _ wait. Steve’s ID brain is driving as he takes himself in hand and lines up his thick cock head against his lover’s entrance. It’s not an easy slide. Bucky’s body is tight, it fights him, despite how lubed and warmed up he’d gotten himself earlier. The resistance is perfect.

He bottoms out in three pumps. His cock is too thick and long for this not to hurt as much as it feels good. Below him, Bucky makes the soft, throaty sounds of distress that he’s ashamed to say make go that much harder. There’s nothing but the slap of their wet bodies, Steve’s panting, and Bucky’s low throated whines and moans echoing through the hollow space around them. 

“Mm-not gonna break - punk.” Bucky grits out, asking for more punishment and Steve happily delivers it. He lets go of his neck and grips into his thighs, bruising skin that won’t show the marks in less than an hour. He angles his ass up, forcing his lovers face into the cold concrete and starts in again. Savage, fast strokes that hit at Bucky’s prostate like the sadist he is. 

He can feel his balls tightening, and saliva slicking down his fangs. By the shuddering rhythm of Bucky’s ass clenching against his dick he knows the other man is close to. His right hand hooks around and under his neck, wrenching him and tearing at the neck of his shirt with the other. Steve snarls and bits into the meat of the other man’s neck at the exact moment he spills. Twitching and stilling inside of him as he holds him down just to feel his fangs sinking into supple flesh.    
  
They can’t drink from one another. It’ll make them sick, but it tastes good on his tongue all the same. Bucky finishes a few seconds after he does, painting the floor with his seed as they both collapse onto one another. 

They could keep going if they wanted to, but he can sense Bucky getting restless beneath him. He pulls out slow, a little bit of guilt setting in after the worst of his passion is burned out. “I didn’t hurt you too much?” He asks, in between blood tinted kisses against his neck. The wound is already fading, even as he nuzzles against it. 

“You hurt me just perfect.” He laughs and rolls over. Somehow maneuvering both of their massive frames so that Steve is tucked up under the other mans chin. He’s laying in his own come and the ground is hard, but neither one of them seem to be in much of a hurry. 

There was something they needed to talk about -

Dark hair. Sweet, blush red lips. Cute little gap toothed smile. 

_ Darcy. _

“So Pepper thinks you’re acting in an untoward fashion to our new co-worker.” He can feel the man below him laugh. “Somethin’ like that, I guess I popped off, read a situation wrong.” Steve frowns into his chest. That’s out of character for him. 

“Are you still watching her?” They both go still. “Yes.”

“God damnit, Bucky.” He sits up, making sure he’s stuffed back into his pants before offering a hand to Bucky to stand. Which the other man refuses. 

“Can you tell me why?” He knows what he told Pepper, but he also knows that’s not the whole truth. 

“There’s just - something about her. I can’t look away.” He doesn’t like the closed off body language, or the lack of eye contact. Bucky’s come a long way since they brought him in from the cold and it gets under his skin, seeing him think the worst of himself. 

Even if he might be a little bit right. 

“Me too.” He’s been good about not obsessing over her file, or spying on her security feed, but he had JARVIS set an alert to tell him whenever she left the building. He doesn’t know why, but he just needs to know where she is.    
  
They don’t even know this woman. He doesn’t understand their behavior. 

“What does she smell like to you?” What the hell kind of question is that? For some reason, he feels a hot lick of shame in his gut when he thinks about it. Like it’s personal. But this is Bucky, and he must have a good reason for asking.

“Buttered popcorn.” Specifically, the popcorn that they used to serve at the Cecil Theater in Brooklyn. He’s never been able to recreate the taste or scent of it, but Darcy smelled like some of his best memories before the war. 

Blood just smells like blood. He’s drawn to the taste of it, but he’s never crossed his wires like this with a human. He thought it was just some quark to do with her specifically. 

“What does it mean?” He asks as Bucky draws his hair up, tying it up into a loose bun and sighing.    
  
“Considering what happened to the last guy who smelled that good, it’s not great.”

* * *

It turns out Pepper forgot to mention the party that weekend. It made the fitting timely and even more stressful. She absolutely had to walk away from it with at least one ok fitting dress. Her hopes were not high.

She skipped breakfast that morning and met up with the stylist on the common floor. Her low expectations crash landed and settled in her stomach when she walked off the elevator.

Darcy wasn’t the only person getting a fitting. 

The entire floor was filled with rack after rack of clothing. Dresses, hand bags, mens suits and jackets. There were no cameras, but Darcy got the impression that she just walked onto the set of a Vogue photoshoot. Natasha Romanoff was standing on a little raised dias while a seamstress and a designer flitted around her. The red head was staring dead center at Darcy, her blue-white eyes burning with something she couldn’t define. 

There were several other platforms and sections where various Avengers were in states of undress. 

“You must be Darcy!” A voice too chipper for eight am rang through her brain and she found herself enveloped in a crushing hug. A tall, willowy woman in her late fifties embraced the girl and then grabbed her arms, pulling her attention away from the blood thirsty spy and surveying Darcy’s features. The woman had soft, strawberry blonde hair that frizzed out in hundreds of tiny ringlets. She wore a flowing black dress and big chunky silver rings on all of her fingers. 

She was a very touchy person.

Fingers fanned out over Darcy’s shoulders, and combed through her hair. It felt like she was picking about the minutia of her appearance and it made her want to smack the old woman’s hands away. 

“Annastasia Grace, pleasure to meet you! Pepper told me we had a fresh face but - girl. Your cheekbones are divine. And that skin. Like milk! I could drink you up!” This woman was definitely human, but her choice of words were poor. 

“Hi.” She stammered, before being yanked over towards the very end of the room. Annastasia Grace talked loudly and nonsensically about that seasons cuts while she passed Clint Barton being fitted for a tuxedo and Captain America watching her as a short tailor tried to use a tape measure around his meaty neck. 

She wanted to sink down into some hidden crack in the floor when her stylist thrust her up onto a dias right next to Steve. Was she supposed to change in front of everyone!? 

“Do not move, Little Doll. I have three pieces that you must try on immediately!” And then she turned and began to rummage through a rack of dozens of dresses, which couldn’t all be for her. Did they make that many choices in size Tent?

“Darcy?” She turned to find Steve Rogers staring at her with something like caution in his eyes. He seemed to be a little more friendly since their first meeting. Darcy gave him a hesitant little wave, her hand totally hidden by the long ratty sleeve of her mottled green sweater. It was baggy and long enough to be a dress. Underneath she wore faded black legging and chunky, scuffed black boots. She looked every bit like a Before Picture. 

“Horrifying, isn’t it? Don’t worry, they’ll finish you up in no time. Pretty sure you clean up better than the rest of us.” He seemed to be much more relaxed. A little half moon smile playing on his lips and glittering in his blue eyes. 

Was that a compliment? It took her a moment to find her voice, and when she did it came out all twisted and flat. “Is this something you guys do a lot? Play super model dress up?”

He laughed and shrugged into the sinfully tight cut black coat the tailor was trying to coax him into. “We make a lot of public appearances. Official functions, and charities. I think I prefer the uniform to a three piece suit, it’s more comfortable.”   
  
“I too would rather get punched in the mouth than talk to total strangers in uncomfortable shoes.” Darcy was ready to laugh, her quick comeback a little out of place. She wasn’t usually like this with people she didn’t know well. For a moment, she forgot how hopelessly far out of her reach he was. 

He chuckled, those blues eyes sparkling with mischief she wouldn’t have guessed at. Then he sobered for a moment and looked down. As if he were trying to put his words in order. “Sorry about the other night. I was short with you.” He didn’t make any excuses for his behavior, just owned up to it, and apologized.    
  
“It’s fine.” Her reply comes out too quickly. No, it’s not fine, not really. But it was nice of him to think to apologize to someone like her at all. She was no one to him, he wasn’t obligated to be kind to her.

“Here we go!” Annastasia Grace approaches Darcy with a flourish. Holding up what looks like a sheer, gold toned garment embroidered with a delicate motif of silk flowers with a flared lace skirt.    
  
“Where’s the rest of the dress?” Darcy asked, incredulous. Behind her, she heard Steve laugh. It was probably at her expense. He was no doubt imagining her disgusting, sausage shaped body squeezed into the garment and came to the same comical conclusion. 

“Darling, come on, let’s get you in it. We’ll pour you into this little number and you’ll see what it does for those curves.” Is this woman insane? Darcy is once again yanked forward and into a dark little curtained off space for her to change in private.    
  
“Come on now, we’ve got twenty pieces to try on and only two hours to do it!” Jesus Christ, she’s going to have to squeeze her body in and out of ill fitting lace and satin twenty times!?

Pepper went to a lot of trouble to get this set up, so she couldn’t storm off like a brat. She was representing the Initiative now, and she knew there was no room for personal sloppiness.    
  
Five agonizing minutes of stripping down into her ratty panties and bra, and shimmying into the dress she cautiously peeked out from behind the black curtain.    
  
“Anna- could you help me with the zip-” The girl squeeked as she was pulled out. The dress had a long slit up her right thigh, showcasing her pudgy, pale leg in its entirety. It tried to nip her waist into a shape that her body wasn’t meant to be in, and the pale creamy gold mesh over her shoulders and chest covered as much as it revealed. As the woman angled behind her to get the zipper up she saw Steve Rogers stare down at her. 

The thing actually fit, she felt the back piece come together as it was fastened behind her. But she wasn’t relieved. No. Steve had his hand over his mouth, like he was going to be sick. He waived off the tailor about to hand him a charcoal grey vest. “Excuse me.” He mumbled and hurried out of the room, his head down, pointedly not looking at her.

She was a joke in a dress worth more than her entire life. Who could blame him. Her soul make got an uncensored view of what her body was really shaped like and he hightailed it out so fast that his tailor was left gaping like a fish.

After that, she just went kind of numb.

She moved through the motions and allowed the over-eager stylist to shove and grapple her into dress after dress. There’s a tightness in her chest that feels like the beginnings of a panic attack, but she swallows it down. 

By the time she got back to her apartment she had four dresses with matching heels and handbags. A pile of lipstick for a pig. She dumped it on her bed and then got in the bath where she spent the rest of the evening replaying the look of disgust on her soulmates face when he saw the shape of her body.

So her soulmates are vampires. They're still good, and strong, and beautiful. On what planet did she ever hope to be enough for them?


	4. No Dance Cards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has become more a whump fic than I originally intended. Again. Trigger warning for disordered eating and body dysmorphia. The non-con tags apply to this chapter. Your regularly scheduled heroes are the bad guys here, so be warned.

A few days after Steve had to run off and leave the fitting, they attend one of Stark’s galas. It’s supposed to be a fundraiser for the arts. SI will match the money raised through the purchase of the various paintings and sculptures arrayed in Stark Tower’s massive three-tiered lobby. 

The work is good, all done by local New York darlings of the art world, although Bucky thinks Steve’s stuff is better. The punk refuses to show his work. Maybe someday he can convince him to put it on display if there’s a charity event like this. 

He’s all decked out in a black on black suit. The coloring works well with his gleaming hand and he likes that it still gives him the option of blending into the crowd if the worst goes down. He’s using it to his advantage now, and watching little Darcy Lewis move through the cramped and chaotic party. 

He’s not as famous or loved as Captain America, so the annoying society types at these functions usually leave him be, and he’s all too happy to leave the glad-handing to Steve. Especially tonight. 

He’s stalking her on the peripherals of the gathering and he knows it’s wrong. If Pepper catches sight of his behavior she might give him an earful. Or maybe they’d get rid of Darcy? Send her to some secluded research park near the new Avengers Mansion. His fangs drop at the thought and his aggression rises with nowhere to direct it. He feels empty, like it’s been weeks and not days since they last fed.

They generally make pigs of themselves on missions. Taking the opportunity to feed on a fresh, struggling body. The bagged blood they subsist on in between keeps them functioning but it does nothing to appease their baser natures. 

His eyes track Darcy. From the third story of the lobby, he can see her trying to shrink herself. Weave in and out of people and feint on conversations. He can read her discomfort clearly and he empathizes with it. He hates these things too. Maybe he should go down there and talk to her? There’s no reason not to make a friend of her. 

And then pull her into a dark corner to taste her skin and sip at her veins. 

He runs a hand through his hair, dislodging the careful bun Steve put it in earlier. She’s wearing a gold mesh gown that highlights her perfectly thick figure. The neck is wide, framing her creamy shoulder and the modest cut of her chest. She’s a vision. 

She looks good enough to eat.

He turns and half jogs down the stairs towards Steve. Maybe they can cut out early. Or just duck outside for a few minutes so the brisk autumn air might clear their minds.

He finds Steve pretending to chat with some angular woman. The model type that always smells and tastes a little sickly to him. She’s got bottle red hair, and a dress that looks like it was sewn around her flat body. But he knows Steve is watching Darcy, just like he is. They sometimes take women home from these functions to nibble on. Then wipe their memory of the evening so no one’s hurt or suspicious.    
  
Steve has gotten much better at sweet talking a lady into their bed, not that it takes much these days. Even with two of them, most of the women at these functions are all too happy to follow them upstairs. 

He’d much rather gather up that dark haired little doll making herself scarce than this waif, but Darcy’s off the menu. And they need something else. Anything else. 

“Bucky, this is Veronica. She’s interning with SI’s Social Media team.” Steve introduces her, politely, and they begin this damn tired song and dance all over again.

* * *

Darcy does her best to keep her eyes on the art. Pretending to think deeply about what’s displayed on the walls or installed in heaps across the floor gives her something to hide behind. As much as she tries not to, she keeps looking up and catching sight of Steve. Bucky seems to be hiding, but he’s obviously doing a better job of it than she is. 

Her dress is painfully constricting. It’s that first thing the stylist squeezed her in and it came with a whole set of complicated undergarments meant to give the gauzy, insubstantial gown structure. She can’t help but feel like she’s on display, like some grotesque and rare bug pinned under glass. The bodies around her are so different than her own. Like everyone attached to SI or the Avengers is effortlessly svelte and attractive. 

The only person she could maybe orbit around is Jane, but she left early with Thor. Darcy should sneak out too. After an hour of awkwardly moving through the crowd she justified the expense of the dress and Pepper’s expectation of attendance. 

Only - she likes to watch Steve talk. He moves with assurance and grace. He doesn’t fit the mold news and tabloid media try to shove him in. Gregarious, quick to laugh and willing to chat with anyone. He shines with a dark light. 

She shouldn’t be wanting what she can’t have, but the solid presence of their words on her skin give her room to hope, and to dream. That maybe they could start out as friends, and as she worked on her body, they might accept her. Not as a lover, but as a friend. Something. A connection, inhuman as it is. 

Her loneliness was easy to pack into a little box and ignore before she met them. She could delude herself into believing her soulmates would recognize her and look beyond the body she carried like an albatross to love her freely. 

Darcy moves, like swimming through honey. She approaches the circle of SHIELD agents, super models, and journalists that are dispersing around Steve. Bucky steps through the crowd. He startles her. His suit and his hair and his smile make her heart back flip and drop down into her stomach.    
  
_ They are talking to a beautiful woman. _ Darcy stops.  _ They are taking her hand. _ She takes as many retreating steps back as she can manage.  _ They leave together. _

Darcy feels like a drop of oil in the ocean. Insignificant and unwanted. Her eyes follow them up into the clear glass elevator at the back of the lobby. The one that will ask for a retinal scan. The car travels up, and up out of sight.    
  
Her hands feel numb as reality comes rushing back. Filling her senses like someone’s turned the volume of the room up to ten. She can’t cry here, she can’t. 

The girl waits five minutes and then slogs over to the same elevator her soulmates took with a woman she’ll never hope to match. Why bother trying? If she lost sixty pounds she’d still have her face, her splotchy skin, her pendulous, sagging breasts.    
  
Her scan takes longer than it should because the lazer gets an inaccurate read through her tears. She has to stand there, sniffling, wiping at her eyes until it finally gives her permission to hit the button for her floor. She doesn’t see the red headed shadow that slinks in after her, silent on her four inch stiletto heels. The woman remains unnoticed as the doors seal shut and Darcy presses her face against the cool metal of the elevator.    
  
Thinking she’s alone, her tears come out in full force. Ugly, hiccuping sobs as she hunches over and tries to draw in breath while her throat chokes on her inadequacy. 

“Who are those tears for, маленький?” Darcy startles and whirls around. Natasha is there, crowding her against the wall of the elevator. Wiping the dark tracks of her mascara off of her cheek with one hand while the other cradles her face. She’s wearing a black satin dress, flaring out into a subtle skirt all arrayed in sparkling tulle. 

She has no idea how to answer her, so she doesn’t. “How did you get in here.” Natasha smiles. Her teeth are very white, and she smells like orange blossoms. “I walked in. You weren’t paying attention.” Natasha is taller than she is, her lithe body strumming with power as she presses her flat against the wall of the elevator. 

“I was just- I want to go home.” Darcy stutters, and flinches when the other woman’s scorching hot fingers trail down her bare neck and splay out across the top curve of her breasts. She must feel all that fear in her heart beat, forcing it to stumble and roar. 

“I’ll take you home.” Her voice sounds strange. The handful of times she’s run into Natasha the Black Widow was focused. She seemed to see beyond anything Darcy could percieve. But now, the woman’s pupils were blown, and she sounded distracted. Drunk. “I don’t want to.” It took every ounce of her small reserves of courage to say that to her, but it doesn’t stop her touches. 

“You’ve never been with a woman.” It’s not a question. “You’ve never had anyone.” The red head takes a deep breath of Darcy’s skin, her head dipping down into the crook of her neck while the girl squirms and thrashes.

How does she know? How could she guess that she’d waited for her soulmates, like a pathetic, over eager fool?

“JARV-!” Darcy’s screams are swallowed by Natasha’s mouth. Both wrists are pinned against the wall. It happens fast. Natasha’s lipstick smearing over her own pale, pink gloss. Her tongue licking deep into her mouth while the girl tries to scream. 

And her fangs. She can  _ feel  _ them. Sharp little points pressing down against her bottom lip. The kiss breaks and Darcy panics. “Natasha - what are you doing - Natasha - stop!” Her wrists are transferred to just one hand and then she feels that small warm hand palming her breasts through the embroidered fabric of her dress. Something tears. Darcy looks down and sees that it’s the neckline of her dress. There’s a low growl that comes from Natasha’s mouth, but she can’t see her fangs yet.    
  
Her head dips down and the other woman runs her tongue against the flesh she just exposed. Darcy is crying again, panic rising high in her throat when the doors spring open. Darcy hears the sound of a repulsor power on and then Tony Stark, in the full Iron Man suit, plucks the red headed woman off of Darcy’s body and pulls her out into the hallway.    
  
Her turns to her, his voice filtered through his helmet and says, “Go to your quarters, don’t come out until morning.” The doors slam shut and Darcy stumbles back as the elevator speeds up towards her floor. Moving so fast that she stumbles and claws at the walls to keep from sinking down to her knees. When they open again, she sees her hall.    
  
Sobbing, she trips out of the elevator car, ripping the long bottom hem of her skirt as she stumbles towards her door. JARVIS has it open before she can ask and she falls into the dark room. Her living room lights turn on and she can hear the front door hermetically sealing behind her.   
  
“Miss Lewis, I have taken the precaution of initiating Panic mode on your quarters. No one save for Sir, or Miss Potts will be able to gain entry until you disengage.”   
  
She doesn’t acknowledge him, she doesn’t do anything but crumble into a ball of glimmering fabric, and ruined makeup. And she cries.


	5. Spirited Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor makes an executive decision about Darcy's safety, and the boys make a different call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah. Here are some answers. Next chapter is going to be heavy dub-con and basically all smut.

Bucky and Steve lost their appetite once their dinner guest flounced onto their couch. She seemed to working on some kind of angle to insert herself into their lives already. Her audacity and pretentiousness soured Bucky’s appetite and he ended up putting her under a glamour just to get the waif to stop talking.    
  
Despite craving living blood from a pumping heart, neither man could bring themselves to drink of her. Her veins seemed too far close to the skin, and her bones were like dry twigs under her flesh. After an hour of trying to convince themselves that she was at all appetizing, they ended up packing her home in a taxi and making sure that when she woke all she’d remember was leaving the party alone. 

They were about to head to the gym to burn off some of their viciousness when JARVIS requested their presence in the penthouse. It wasn’t a call to assemble, but meeting up on the 90th floor in Tony’s personal residence at two am was not generally a good sign.

The situation, they find, is much more dire.    
  
Thor is bellowing, brandishing Mjolnir with one hand, and pointing into Natasha’s face with the other. Both men job into the room in time to catch the crux of the argument. 

“-she is under  **my** protection. You shall not touch Lady Darcy again or my wrath will fall upon you.” He began to stalk towards Natasha, who’s stone cold, unapologetic face remained impassive. 

“You know what we are, and yet you brought her here.” Clint steps in front of his mate and between Thor. “Hey, buddy, there’s an explanation for this.”    
  
Lightning strikes the upper decks, and a vicious rainstorm begins to brew. “She assaulted her!”   
  
“What the fuck Natasha?” Bucky snarls as he goes for the redhead himself. His blood turning to ice, wondering what he and Steve missed while they were cruising for a cheap and willing meal. 

Clint looks up to the two super soldiers as they approach. Hell in their eyes. Bucky’s always respected Clint, he’s still got most of his humanity intact, and they get along well enough.    
  
“He wants her, too.” Natasha says, leveling a cool challenge towards Bucky. Now all eyes swivel to him and Steve. Even Bruce, who seems to be oscillating between concern and rage. 

“Is this true, James?” Thor asks, the ire in his voice just barely eclipsed by the hurt. He trusts them, trusts Steve and his friends to keep those precious to him safe. He doesn’t have it in him to lie. Though Bucky’s face betrays the truth of Natasha’s words, Steve speaks for them both. 

“We both do, yes.” Honesty isn’t always the best policy, Buck thinks, almost laughing at the earnest confession that just spilled from his first loves mouth. “We don’t know why, but there’s something about her that calls to us.”

Thor looks ready to smash them all into bloodstains, and he’s not sure who would win that fight, because he’s pretty sure Banner and Tony agree with him where Darcy is concerned.   
  
“Ok. Right. Everyone calm the fuck down. Earth’s mightiest heroes can sit down and talk about our feelings like adults, right?”   
  
“That depends.” Bucky spits, looking at Natasha. “What did you do to her?”   
  
The red head catches his eyes in hers, and tilts her head. “What do you want to do with her? Think about it, and that’s what I was going to do.” Bucky lunges at her, his fangs dropping and his eyes turning black.    
  
Before the whole ugly scene can devolve into the fight everyone is sporting over, Bucky stumbles back. Struck in the chest by a low powered blast from one of his gauntlet repulsors.    
  
“Calm your tits, Barnes.” He rights himself with the help of Steve, who looks about ready to tear into Natasha himself, but the punks always been more diplomatic than he was. Back alley fights be damned.    
  
“Item one, Romanoff. Would you kindly tell the class what you told me during our dance earlier this evening?” The woman is still wearing her party dress. He can read the altercation in the burned and blackened spots along the sleeves.

“I’m descended of the Bathory line.”

“That doesn’t excuse your actions. I fail to see how your goddamn prey preferences - Oh.” It clicks in Bucky’s head, then. What he knows of the females of the Bathory clan.    
  
Steve and Thor are left out of the shared knowledge of what this means.    
  
“I fail to see how that is relevant.” Thor states, the venom just barely draining from his tone.    
  
“Darcy is her favorite flavor, Fabio.” Tony pipes up, as crass as ever.   
  
There’s a pause, as Bucky looks to Steve and waits for him to put two and two together with his knowledge of history and the significance of that name.

“She’s a - virgin.” Steve blushes up to the tips of his ears. And he wonders if is blond haired mate was affected as viscerally as he was by that knowledge. 

_ Untouched. Pure. Naive. _

“She’s not fucking safe here.” Clint declares, fully stepping in front of Natasha. “Natasha can’t help wanting her. You can’t ask her to ignore the curse of our bloodline. Sooner or later her beast is going to-” Nat cuts him off. “I blacked out. Didn’t come to until Stark threw me against a wall and I couldn’t smell her anymore.”

“You mean the compulsion of your nature over powered your sense?” Thor asks Nat directly. “Yes. It’s been a long time since I’ve run into someone Darcy’s age who was of age, and still virginal. It’s why I wanted her gone, you might as well ask a vampire to resist his soulmate. It’s the same compulsion. My beast took over, and I know it will happen again.”   
  
Something in his stomach drops when he guesses what the logical conclusion to this information is. 

“We have to get here the hell away from the tower.” Tony suggests, and Thor rages. “She is instrumental to my lady’s work, and I consider her a dear friend. I will not turn her out. I know well Fury and the dredges of SHIELD would have her, I fear for her soul. They would warp her, turn her into a weapon.” Bucky thinks Thor knows something the rest of them don’t about Darcy, but it’s not his place to pry.   
  
He’s too busy having a panic attack, thinking about her being gone. Out of their reach. Alone. Unprotected. 

“It still doesn’t explain the wonder twins attraction, though.” Tony muses, and looks directly to them. If she were their soulmate, this behavior would be typical. At least they’d know how to go about courting her, but she’s not theirs. They could never take a human, a human with a future and a soulmate waiting to love them, and then abandon her when the missing piece of their souls finally comes along. It’s cruel, and selfish. 

_ It’s all he wants to do. Take her. Make her unappetizing to Natalia. Keep her. Between them, under them. Plump and happy and saited.  _

He tugs his fingers through his hair, trying to shake the image of her tied up to their headboard, nude save for red satin ribbons. Waiting for them. 

One look at Steve tells him all he needs to know. He wants her too, just as badly. 

“She’s a beautiful young woman, who wouldn’t want her?” Is Steve’s only response. Neither man can explain why they need her like she was the missing part of their souls. 

“I will take her to Asgard, then.” Bucky feels his heart shatter. That’s so much worse than sticking her in a safe house. It’s another world away. Everything inside of him aches, his beast roars.   
  
“That’s probably for the best.” For the first time, Bruce speaks. Of all of them, he knows best how precarious it is to have a mortal in their lives. Sam is safe from their attentions, but even so, it’s not an easy thing, being a vampires mate. “She’s not safe here, and she’s not safe with SHIELD. Maybe we can figure out a more permanent solution after a few months, but Asgard is the best bet for now.”

“Jane will not be happy, but I will explain it is for her own good. My mother has long desired to meet Darcy, and her council may help us determine a more permanent course of action.”

“Why is Friga interested in a mortal girl?” Keen as always, Natasha asks the question they’re all thinking. 

“To answer that would be to betray my friend’s privacy, and her trust. Which I will not do.” Thor’s cold, pointed answer will have to do. 

“So. Lewis needs to start packing her bags, when do we make this happen?”   
  
“In three days time. It is not easy to travel to my homeworld with a human. Jane suffered greatly for it when we were ill equipped to prepare. I will travel before, and enlist Heimdel’s aid.” He turns to the rest Tony, whom appears to be the only person he truly trusts in the room.   
  
“Will you protect her until I return and carry her to safety.”   
  
“Pepper and I will keep an eye on her.” He knows Darcy is safe with them, just as well as she knows she is unsafe with Natasha, Steve, and himself. 

* * *

Science waits for no man, neither does it wait for a traumatized witch trying to get her emotional shit together. Even though she wants to be anywhere but where she is, Darcy meets Jane bright and early the next morning on the R & D floor. It’s Sunday, but that doesn’t matter when her equipment is finally here and she needs an extra set of hands to get it set up.    
  
The women work in companionable silence into the afternoon. She doesn’t have to ask where Thor’s gone. Her boss always gets hyper-focused when he’s off on Asgard. There’s some part of her that maybe thinks he’ll never come back to her. She wonders if that’s better or worst than never having your soulmate in the first place. Or maybe it’s better that she knows her own mates will never want her the way she wants them, and so the pain she feels will fade into something bearable someday. 

Maybe. Probably?

Though Darcy wears her distress and distraction like one of her many lumpy, unflattering cardigans, Jane doesn’t comment on it. They manage to get the larger pieces of her particle field array up by one and that’s when Darcy has JARVIS cut power to the lab.   
  
“Hey!”   
  
The short little brunette crosses her arms, “It’s lunchtime. That means that food goes into your facehole and science waits until you’ve consumed enough calories to continue vital body functions.” The hypocrisy of shaming Jane into eating a sandwich when all she had for breakfast was a piece of unbuttered toast is not lost on her. Then again, Jane is already perfect, so she’s allowed to eat. 

“What about you?” Her boss counters, knowing it’s for her own good, but somehow noticing her assistant's eating habits for the first time in their working career. It catches her off guard.    
  
“I ordered you something from the deli downstairs. I packed a lunch.” She didn’t. Her plan was to shove food at Jane and count on her being too distracted by her notebook and her food to notice that the other woman wasn’t eating anything. 

“You didn’t bring a lunch bag in with you.” To this, Darcy has no answer. Usually, it’s easier to pull one over on Jane. “Oh-” She’s really a shit liar, but she tries anyway. “I forgot about it. It's just an elevator ride away, though.” Jane gives her a nonplussed look and rolls her eyes. “I don’t want anything from the deli, let’s go grab food in the common kitchen. It’ll take half the time.”

“God, fine!” Darcy throws up her hands and both women make their way to the elevator. When they get to the kitchen, they find the entire floor deserted. A faint alarm is sounding, and a red wash of light casts the high-end decor in a wash of blood-red light. 

“What the hell?” Darcy just stomps over to the kitchen, pulling Jane along. “It’s just a call to assemble, probably something local.” JARVIS, helpful as ever, confirms Darcy’s theory. “That is correct, Miss Lewis. Sir, Captain Rogers, Lieutenant Barnes, Mr. Barton, Miss. Romanoff and Dr. Banner answered a call from the NYPD’s Disaster Response team.”   
  
Her stomach did a flip-floppity turn and Darcy couldn’t help but wonder if her boys were ok. She had no right calling them hers, but she couldn’t help caring if they were hurt or not. Is this going to be the rest of her life? Waiting with bated breath on the sidelines, agonizing over soulmates who will never really know she exists?   
  
Yes, that seems like her luck. 

“JARVIS, is there any footage of the fight?” He responds in the affirmative. Darcy gets to work on some sandwiches and left over soup for herself and Jane. Her boss, uninterested in the heroics unless Thor is involved, pulls out her moleskine and starts going over her handwritten notes. She barely registers the plate of food Darcy pushes in front of her, but her assistant is distracted, too. She neglects her own lunch, and walks into the next room. Collapsing heavily onto the large, plush sofa to watch the screen JARVIS has only just pulled up.

What she sees is the aftermath. Rubble and smoke. Somewhere in D.C. The news announcer has moved on to showing clips of the short lived battle. Dr. Doom drew out the Avengers and used some new terror to defeat them. It was laid out in all it’s lurid detail. How he’s now sitting in custody, locked up for good in some off-shore federal prison. There were no casualties, but Iron Man appeared to be badly injured. There was more, but the sound of the jet docking in on the floor below them ripped her away from the news story. For the rest of her life, she’ll never be able to say why she ran to the elevator and took it up to the docking-bay. She moved as if compelled.    
  
She wanted to see her soulmates. See with her own eyes that they were ok. 

Natasha would be with them, she knew it even as she stepped off the elevator. It was only last night that the woman attempted to - no. If she thinks about it, and if she names it then she’ll be useless with fear. So she shoves the whole horrific scene down.   
  
So deep that when she runs into the big empty space and spots Natasha and Clint tending to a stretching with an unconscious Tony Stark she doesn’t stop to pay it much mind. The red head certainly clocks her. And she can’t know the strange scuffle that takes place behind her as she disappears into an area of the tower she is definitely not supposed to be in. To see people who don’t want to see her.

* * *

Steve is always last to leave the Quinjet. Which means Buckys the last to leave, too. It’s a good think Bruce sat this one out. Sam got in early that morning and the two of them have been holed up in their quarters. Asking him to tear himself away from his mate after the agony of being without him for a week was too much. So they went in with one hand tied behind their backs. 

No one expected Doom to have puzzled out their secret, though. How he figured that they are all a pack of vampires, they have no idea. But once Tony wakes up, they intend to find out.    
  
Steve is gathering up some shrapnel he collected for Bruce to analyze later. Doom hit them with blasts coated in something powerful enough to burn through Tony’s armor, and poison his vampiric blood. He’ll be ok, but only barely. Pepper is on her way from Florida, bringing with her a trusted live donor. He needs fresh blood, at least it’s not touch and go anymore.    
  
Bucky turns, ready to start ambling down the ramp and off the jet when he sees her.    
  
She’s running at them and he can’t move. Her dark hair is wild, and the high black shine of it catches the harsh glow of the emergency lights on the runway. She’s wearing some dark, tight material around her legs, and a baggy grey dress. Over it all, a black knit cardigan that looks two sizes too big for her petite frame. 

His breath waits in the back of his throat, afraid to catch her scent. Not sure of what he’s going to do when she gets close enough to…   
  


Steve gasps, right next to his ear. He was so focused on the little dark haired beauty that he didn’t notice the other men stepping behind him. Her boots crash against the metal below her as she takes a few steps up the ramp, and then stops. Panting.    
  
As if she just remembered something.    
  
“Darcy?” He asks, cautious. He doesn’t trust himself. She shouldn’t be here. Steve says as much. “Miss. Lewis, -” He starts stern with her, taking a few steps until she’s in reach. Her cheeks are flushed, and her lips are so red. Bucky is frozen in place.    
  
He should stop this. He  **needs** to stop this. 

She shrinks into herself, as if someone struck her. “I’m sorry. I heard Tony got hurt and I wanted to-check. To check on you.”    
  
On them? Two remorseless blood drinking killers. Steve’s face softens, and she takes a step back. Uncertainty and embarrassment written plain on her features. And then, she, something happens. He can’t see it, but he can sense that Steve’s eyes have gone back, that Darcy is staring into a sharp, fanged mouth.    
  
When Steve grabs her by the waist and drags her into the jet she doesn’t scream. He can hear her staccato heartbeat, smell the fear in her sweat. But she doesn’t scream. And then he loses himself to blackness, while the man recedes for the beast.

* * *

A different kind of alarm sounds when the Quinjet takes off. It goes directly into stealth mode. Tony Stark is fighting to stay conscious, Natasha and Clint are scrambling to open up a line of communication, and Bruce is barreling out of the elevator into med bay to meet the rest of his team with Sam in tow. 

“What the hell happened?” Bruce asks, as he stumbles into the hospital room where Tony is sitting upright, supported by Clint, as Natasha pumps blood directly into one of his veins. His helmet is shattered, and his breastplate is cracked down the middle. They all look like shit, but something else is wrong.    
  
“The jet, who took it out again?” Sam asks, staring out the window into the thin air it disappeared into. 

  
“Steve and Bucky.” Clint grinds out, and Tony finishes his sentence. “They took Darcy.”   



	6. Playing House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bath time confessions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dub-con for some scary ass threats.

Darcy likes to fill the silence. Despite being emotionally, and sometimes physically, beaten down by the foster system she can’t stop trying to make the best of her interactions. It seems as though fate dealt her a bum deck of cards. With unattainable soulmates and a flawed body, but she’ll never give up trying to make friends. Reaching for happiness even if life keeps smacking her hand away with a wooden spoon.

But she is silent when Steve Rogers pulls her onto the jet. She wants to scream. It would probably be drowned out by the sound of the jet’s back hatch closing and sealing shut. She can’t see Bucky, but she can hear him. Muttering something in the cockpit, hitting buttons, adjusting nobs.    
  
If Steve wasn’t holding her so tightly then she would have fallen over when the jet took off. But he’s got her, steady in his arms. Pushed up against the nearest flat surface. His eyes are black. The pupils spreading out like an oil slick to cover his pretty blue irises and whites. 

“It’s ok, babydoll.” He looks lost, checked out. Natasha was looking at her the same way. But in Steve’s case, she can see some kind of internal battle waging behind his eyes as he tries to reassure her.    
  
It is not ok. These men don’t give a fuck about her. They’re just  _ hungry  _ and that translates into savagery. There’s a really good reason why vampires scare the shit out of her. Everything she’s read about them indicates that they are wild. They lose control, fall to their basest instincts or go into bloodied frenzies. 

“Steve - please-” 

“Come’ere.” Bucky’s voice sounds rough. The jet must be flying itself, to somewhere. Steve backs up, his warm, powerful hands tighten around her as she feels another hard body press into her from the back. Bucky kicks her legs open and she sobs, hating how good it feels to be held by them. Hating more the rush of alien pleasure that sinks low in her stomach when Steve’s muscular thigh slots up high between her legs. 

He presses  _ up  _ until her feet lose purchase from the metal grating floor. Her scuffed black flats dangling while her toes try to find something solid to brace against. Vampires have enhanced senses. He must smell how aroused she is, even through the terror. 

_ They are going to kill her like this, and they are going to make it feel good.  _

Her stomach goes sour and she hates the feeling of hot tears running down her cheeks. Pathetically, she whimpers, her words spilling out as her heart beat kicks up into her throat.   
  
“I don’t want to die.” Both men are lost into the curve of her neck. One on either side. She can feel them, move in near tandem. Their hot breath, and then wet mouths. They aren’t biting yet. Just sucking bruising, heated kisses into her skin that only just hint at the fangs in their mouths.

They say nothing and their assault continues. As her breathing hitches still higher and her gasps turn into the beginnings of hyperventilation. She feels them both bite down on her neck. Two sharp sets of fangs pierce her skin and she screams. It hurts for a heart beat, and then something happens.   
  
It’s not agony. 

It’s so  _ good.  _ Darcy rocks against the burning heat of Steve’s thigh, panting as she feels something warm and delicious curl through her body and settle in her sex. She’s never felt like that before. Feverish from the inside out. No one’es ever made her come - no one but herself. But she feels close now, even as she grows dizzy.

Fate continues it’s cruel laughter, because right before release, the world goes dark.

* * *

Bucky keeps a safe house no one on the team, or SHIELD, knows about. Steve thought it was dishonest when he first told him about it, but he was adamant that they needed a place to lay low. Just in case. He never thought they’d use it like  _ this  _ though.   
  
When Darcy passed out both men stopped their feeding. They were terrified that they’d hurt her, or worse. He’s only seen Bucky cry three times, and one was when he collapsed with their little brunette doll cradled in his arms. 

Luckily, they hadn’t taken as much as they thought. Steve could taste malnutrition in her blood, though. She must not have eaten anything that day. The blood loss was only the nudge she needed for her body to pass right out. 

The worst of the haze was gone, but they were still compelled to take her somewhere private and safe and comfortable. He didn’t understand it, but he couldn’t fight it. It was like the nesting urge vampires have when they meet their mate. 

The trip is short. The cabin is located in Kentucky, and Stark’s Quin Jet makes it in less than twenty minutes. Bucky enabled stealth mode, so there would be no tracking them to the off grid homestead. Every rational thought inside of him is screaming to turn around, go back to the tower, and face their rightful punishment when Thor returns. 

He’s coherent enough to know what they are doing is wrong, but he can’t stop. It’s like watching himself from behind glass. He’s never been so out of control, and that alone terrifies him. Even more so, he’s scared of what they are going to do to Darcy. 

He doesn’t have to ask Bucky, he knows that the other man is sporting the same maddening erection he is. They want more than blood from her.

Her blood seems to sate them for the time being. They land, and Bucky takes her into the cabin, and up to the master bedroom. He was surprised by how homey and luxurious the place was. But it blended in well. If someone stumbled upon it, they would just assume it was yet another off-grid luxury cabin in the middle of nowhere. 

He doesn’t fight Bucky when he disappears with a limp Darcy in his arms. She needs food. Quick carbohydrates and then something more complex and filling. He can do something for her, at least. Deep down, he knows that Bucky isn’t going to take advantage of her, or feed from her again. Not unless Steve is in the room with him. He doesn’t know how he knows it, though. She’s as safe as she’ll ever be with them, unconscious at least. 

There isn’t any fresh food, but the larder is well stocked with frozen veggies, fruits, ice cream, and all sorts of meats and grains. Even the frozen potatoes look pretty good to throw a hash together. First, he goes searching for a blender.   
  
Something tells him she won’t be out long, and he wants to make sure she has something to drink when she wakes up.

* * *

He hates himself, and he hates what they’ve done to her. Even more, he hates that even while she sleeps, he can’t keep his filthy hands off of her.    
  
The bedroom is dominated by a four poster bed, rough hewn and finished wood with fairy lights suspended from the beams. He lays her down, and then goes to work removing her shoes and cardigan. He reaches under her skirt to take her leggings off but forces himself to resist. That’s going too far. Dear god, he doesn’t know if they can control themselves but he can try to give her as much dignity as possible.   
  
When that’s done, he looks down and realizes that he’s still wearing his tac-suit. The dark blue front of it reminds him sharply of his old uniform during the war. The fight was over fast, so he’s not filthy. Still -

  
He takes off his outer layers, and slips his boots off. The master assassin tripping over his own laces because he can’t keep his eyes off of her. She’s so beautiful. Like an angel with her dark hair fanning out around her and those rose-red lips.    
  
After he’s stripped down to the dark tank top and briefs he wears beneath he stops himself from climbing in. His cock is throbbing. He can’t remember being so hard in his entire life. He can’t snuggle up next to her with that monster in plain sight. So he pulls on a fresh pair of grey sweats from the spare clothing he stashed months ago.   
  
Then, finally, he lays down and pulls her into his arms. Pillowing her head on his chest and running his fingers through her satin soft hair. 

This is sketchy, and he knows it’s wrong, but he can still feel the beast on him. Receded somewhat once it got a taste of the girl. Like Steve, he knows right from wrong, but he can’t bring himself to act on it. 

Downstairs, he can hear and smell Stevie getting some food on. That’s good. Her blood tasted so thin. It’s like she’s been skipping meals, but he can’t imagine why. Stark pays the girl plenty, and all she needed to do was ask JARVIS for a grocery order. 

It’s that question, and his inhibited state, that reminds him to pull up her file on his phone. He downloaded it that morning. His curiosity and low-key obsession got the better of him. So far, he’d managed not to pour over it, but something told him he should now. 

By the time Steve comes up two hours later he’s read it three times. And he’s feeling a lot of emotions. Why didn’t no one catch this?    
  
Steve sets down a tray with a steaming hot bowl of what smells like a quick stew and a large strawberry smoothie. His mate reads the distress on his face and sits down on the bed, taking a moment to run his fingers over Darcy’s cheek before looking up.    
  
“Do you think Stark tracked us?”   
  
“No- have you read her file?”

Steve runs a hand through his blond hair. At some point, he changed out of his uniform, too. He was wearing a tight white t-shirt and matching grey sweats. They both looked dressed down, as if they anything but the monsters they are.

“I’ve been trying not to pry into her life, Buck.” He leaves what they both know unspoken. That this is so much worse than invading her privacy. 

But, he’s got to know what Bucky found.    
  
“She’s a foster kid. SHIELD collected all of her medical and psych files from the state. Reading between the lines, it looks like she suffered a lot of abuse.” He sees the emotion that first flashed hot in his own veins. Rage. “Are there any names in there?”   
  
Bucky can’t help but smile a little bit. Man after his own heart. “Yeah. But - later.” He passes the phone over to Steve, the important document he wants the other man to read pulled up. 

_ Tendency to self harm. Disordered eating from puberty on. Condition likely to worsen.  _ A careless hand written note on Darcy’s intake form for her last foster placement. She was seventeen. 

“The way her blood tasted-” Steve whispers, his voice choked with emotion. “God, we hurt her.” He can see the big blond begin to curl into himself. Take all manner of sins inward. Bucky grabs him by the neck, pulls him close, right over where Darcy’s head rests pillowed on his chest.    
  
“We’re going to take care of her. Starting now.” Then he kisses him. He means for it to be a kind of seal, like a pact. But it devolves into tongues and fangs and it lasts far too long.

It shouldn’t surprise him that Darcy chooses that moment to wake up.

* * *

Warmth and softness and safety. The feelings surround her and then ebb back before disappearing completely once her mind begins to clear. They bit her, the boys. Her soulmates. Why is she still alive?

There’s movement above her, and she can smell the feint scent of masculinity and some kind of woodsy aftershave. A big, shinning metal arm is wrapped around her. Pinning her to a large, warm chest. The sound of lips crashing above her brings her eyes up in time to see Bucky and Steve sharing a heated, deep kiss.    
  
Her blush is like a burning brand. It covers her nose and cheeks, no doubt making her face look splotchy and uneven. 

She freezes when both men look down on her. Steve hovers above her, covering her back where she’s curled up and held against Bucky. Their eyes seem to have gone back to normal, but there is a deep nameless mania within them that makes her shudder.   
  
They look like the heroes on the news, they look like men - but she knows they are not. 

“Why didn’t you kill me?” She wasn’t ready to die, but she didn’t want to be toyed with, either. Darcy wanted to see it coming. 

Both men share a look of horror and sadness. Steve especially, he looks like she just choked out a puppy in front of him.    
  
“We’d never hurt you.” He says, with feeling. She shouldn’t believe him, but it’s hard to deny that earnestness in his voice. Or the way he siddles up behind her. Bracketing her between himself and Bucky. His nose sinks into her hair and she can hear him breath in deeply. 

Her blood must be pretty irresistable. It all made a kind of morbid sense. Natasha attacked her, and now she’s been fed on and - she tries to sit up to take in her surroundings. Did they take her out of the tower.    
  
Directly in front of the bed is a large window that looks out into an unending sea of green trees. She doesn’t get much time to study her surroundings because Bucky is pulling her back. Gentle but insistent.    
  
“You bit my neck and drank my blood. That hurt.” At first, she amends mentally. She’s too embarrassed to tell them that it was the most intimate touch she’d ever known. Something she doesn’t ever expect to feel from her soulmates for real. 

Bucky frowns. “We lost control, and then you passed out.” He looks to Steve who rolls over and hands a big glass with what looks like some kind of pink smoothie inside of it to him.    
  
He sits up, taking her with him until they’ve propped her up against the headboard, still smothering her, he places the cool glass in her hand. Her hands visibly shake. There’s a bubble of dizziness in her head telling her it’s been almost twenty four hours since she had a real meal.    
  
The girl worries her lip. It looks like a smoothie, and it smells like strawberries. Her mouth is so dry, and she’s so hungry…   
  
But both men are looking at her expectantly and she knows that if she drinks it, then she’ll lose all of her self control. She’ll eat whatever the hell she wants. Every bite is like putting distance between her and the men beside her.    
  
“Im not hungry.” She tries to push the glass away but Bucky’s hand closes over her’s and forces her to keep it. Steve grips her chin and forces her to look into his eyes.    
  
They are black again and her heart slams fast in her chest. Are they angry?   
  
For a moment. He does look angry, furious even, but it passes. Even though his eyes have totally eclipsed to blackness, he looks down on her with determination and softness. “You need the calories. We can taste it in your blood.” Darcy shivers when Bucky leans down, and whispers in her ear. “Finish the whole glass, Darcy. Or I’ll force feed you this.” Steve’s eyes go wide and his mouth parts as Bucky takes her hand in his flesh hand and brings it down against his sweats. 

He’s thick, and hard against her fingers. Once she makes contact he hisses, and she can hear him growling in her ear. She tips the glass back with her still free hand and drinks down a few swallows. Beneath her other hand his cock twitches and she can feel both men staring at her neck.    
  
When he’s satisfied that she’s drinking the smoothie, Bucky releases her hand. Which she pulls back like it were pressed against a hot stove and not her soulmates dick. 

His massive, thick, throbbing dick. Christ. Why would he do that? Why is he hard at all? Is it because he was kissing Steve? It can’t be because of her. He was just threatening her, in the crudest way possible. 

Her confusion deepens. As she finish her drink she feels Steve’s fingers curl gently around a thick strand of her hair.    
  
“Good girl.” He whispers, his warm hand squeezing her upper thigh, over her leggings, and under her dress. It makes her gasp in surprise, choking around the last swallow of the strawberry concoction. 

Are they trying to seduce her so that she’ll give up her blood willingly? It makes sense why they’d want to force feed her carbs. Does she have any choice in the matter?   
  
“You guys are going to make me fat -er.” She tries to make light of the situation, and test her boundaries. Steve smiles, almost bashful about it. “God willing.” He straightens out and then brings over a little tray filled with a delicious, piping hot bowl of some kind creamy potatoe soup. 

It smells like he made it from scratch. Before she can decline it her stomach growls and she sighs. Darcy starts to dig in with prompting. Embarrassed by the sloppy way she’s woofing it down, but too hungry to care. As she eats, Bucky’s metal fingers comb through her hair. It’s soothing. 

“Am I allowed to as where you’ve taken me?”   
  
“You can ask, but we don’t have to answer.” Bucky drawls. The smile in his voice warms a different part of her body.    
  
Steve sighs. “It’s a safe house.” She doesn’t miss a beat. “Ironic, since I don’t feel very safe.” To the bitter end, her big mouth is going to shoot off. She cringes, waiting for one or both of them to smack her for that one, but the blow never comes. 

When she looks up, Steve is crestfallen. They both noticed the way she tensed up, waiting for one of them to hit her on instinct. He looks to Bucky, like he’s lost. 

“Please,” He starts, and lowers his head. Kissing the crown of her hair. It feels like he;s inhaling her. “It’s just for a little while. Thor was going to take you to Asgard, after Natasha-”   
  
Bucky growls, and his goes over her shoulders. Something Steve’s said agitates him. “After Natasha attacked you, we knew you weren’t safe in the tower. Thor was supposed to take you to Asgard in a few days but-”   
  
“But you got all snacky and raided the fridge first?” That’s all she is to them. Food. Delicious, but like take-out that’s not good for you, ultimately expendable. 

The soup is totally gone. She basically inhaled it. Which is a good thing, because she starts to squirm under Bucky’s gaze. His eyes are mostly black, with a thin band of blue iris around them. 

“We couldn’t leave you, and we can’t help ourselves.” He says, slowly. Before leaning down, tilting her up by the chin and capturing her eyes. “We aint your soulmates, and we don’t got good intentions, little doll.” His voice is deep, and there’s an edge of that growl again. 

“I know!” She snaps at him. She knows. If they don’t know, then they can’t reject her. If they find out, they might kill her. Let their ambiguous marks fade until someone is born who will be their match. Someone better.   
  
“I need a shower.” She wants to be far away from them. She can feel her arousal from earlier, still wet. Suddenly, she can’t imagine what she smells like. It must be disgusting to them. 

“No shower, just a bath tub. Bathroom’s down the hall, door on the right.” Steve informs her, and then gets up. He offers his hand and she takes it. Wondering if Bucky is going to let her up. 

He does. But she feels his touch linger. His fingers skimming against her bare arms as she moves away from him. She doesn’t turn back, just hurries down to the bathroom without looking back. 

* * *

She couldn’t get away from them fast enough. Bucky hops out of the bed when he hears the water start to fill the tub. Steve sits at the edge of the bed, watching him pace. 

“What the fuck are we doing?” Steve asks out loud as his mate tugs at his own air. Darcy is only a few feet away, naked, slick-

“You scented her, didn’t you?” He asks Steve, staring out of the open door and down the hall. “Doesn’t the bite do that?” He asks, probably thinking about all of the times they fed off of willing one night stands.    
  
“Not usually. You have to put people under in order for them to react that way. It’s-” No. He has to be wrong. But all the signs…   
  
Bucky rips his shirt off, prompting Steve to stand up. Thinking he might need to bodily prevent the other man from running into the bathroom. But he goes still when Bucky slips his hands under his shirt. One metal and one flesh arm skimming up his chest and pulling the fabric up and off of him. 

He runs his fingers over the careful, neat script of Steve’s  _ Ok,  _ and then he brings his hand over to touch the matching  _ Sorry  _ on his own skin.    
  
“Buck - she would have said something.” He’s not really listening, no. He’s pulling up a writing sample from her file and comparing it.    
  
“Would she? She’s been starving herself for god knows how long, and you read it in her file. She don’t think highly of herself.”   
  
Steve shakes his head. “Or maybe she’s terrified of us.” Bucky shakes his head, sharply. “Only one way to find out -”    
  
“Bucky, no!” Steve grabs him by the arm, but he yanks out of his grip. They end up wrestling, tumbling towards the door like a couple of angry teenagers. For his trouble, Steve is tossed through the bathroom door, flung like a rag doll with his bionic arm.    
  
Steve catches himself on his feet and gets ready to pouncy, but he goes still. Darcy is cowering in the tub, trying to reach for a towel that’s laying crumpled on the floor without getting out of the water.    
  
Bucky stalks in and she curls into a little ball, covering the tops of her thighs in a curiously defensive gesture. 

“You’re beautiful.” He says. Taking three steps and then collapsing against the tub. Leaning down into the water, his gleaming arm reaching through the bubbles pull her closer. The water sloshes as she fights him. Shaking her head, her sobs stealing her breath. 

“Please don’t, please don’t look.” She won’t look him in the eye, can’t look at Steve, who’s now standing over them both, peering down into the water at the script writing on tops of her thighs. It’s not modesty, it’s desperation.    
  
He feels about as low as a man can feel. Like he’s bullying her, ripping away her innocence - but he has to know.    
His hand disappears under the water, hooking her leg up by the knee and pulling up. It’s gentle and slow, but she keeps on thrashing. Hot bubbly water soaking the floor.    
  
There, written in his own precise cyrillic. He remembers that day, every moment of it. His face crumbles. “Why-”   
  
“You don’t have to say it, please don’t say it.” Christ, she’s even beautiful when she cries, but why is she crying? Does she really feel so low?   
  
Darcy answers his question as she goes on.   
  
“I don’t expect anything, I know you don’t want me. I know.” She’s breaking down, curling up on herself in the water. “I won’t tell anyone.” Her little voice is so broken, so lost. “Just please don’t say it out loud. I’ll die if you do.”

Steve moves first. She’s up and out of the bath and into his arms in a flash. His mouth smashing into hers. Her surprised scream muffled by his tongue licking into her mouth. He kisses her sloppy. A few beads of blood from his careless fangs turn her mouth cherry red.    
  
He stops, and wraps his arms around her. Holding her so tight, his words choked with his own tears. “You thought we didn’t want you?”

“Why would you?” She whispers into his shoulder, her tears turning to hiccups. Now Bucky takes her into his arms, his kiss is slower, but no less hungry. 

  
“Because you’re perfect.” Is his rough answer.    



End file.
